Canada's telecommunications regulator on Friday approved new and more liberal rules to govern providers of local exchange phone service in more than a dozen municipalities from Rimouski to Victoria.

The cities include Quebec City, Montreal, Ottawa-Gatineau, Toronto, Hamilton, London, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver.

The move means that phone companies will not have to apply to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission for permission to introduce new services or set rates for home phone service.

This marks the second round of local phone service deregulation, or forbearance. On July 25, the CRTC announced deregulation for Fort McMurray, Alta., Halifax, Fredericton and Charlottetown.

For local service deregulation, there had to be at least two competitors in a city, each capable of covering 75 per cent of the market.

"Competition in the local phone market is going to heat up, and consumers can look forward to new and innovative service offerings becoming available from Bell in the near future," said Kevin Crull, Bell's president of residential services.

"We will have opportunities to simplify our pricing structure and develop new and innovative services and promotions that cross all of our lines of business," said Kelvin Shepherd, president of the consumer markets division at MTS Allstream.

While phone companies applauded the CRTC move, the Public Interest Advocacy Centre criticized the decision.

"Telephone services are going the way of banking services — any discounts will be for big customers and the competition will not be strong enough to produce real benefits for ordinary consumers" said Michael Janigan, executive director and general counsel of the Ottawa-based PIAC.